"Arrival"

Lost in daydreams and diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, Jason Poturica felt overwhelmed as a child. Often unable to finish what he had started, he loved reading adventure books, playing with his model railway and making 8mm films. But at 15, neurofeedback treatment helped him unlock his artistic talent.

His childhood had been a fertile training ground. “I had tons of experience being terribly nerdy and having all these hobbies,” says the self-taught Winnipeg artist, whose evolving photographic series, Journeys, conveys the psycho-spiritual perceptions of Mr. E, a mysterious figure who lives inside a book.

Poturica’s technical skills allow him to invite viewers into sculpted worlds that function as emotional landscapes for dreams, memories and imagination. He builds miniature film sets equipped with light-emitting diodes, and then sets his digital camera on a timer as he uses a flashlight to create various effects. He also digitally intensifies colours to enhance his work’s cinematic quality.

Poturica has continued Journeys by adding a new character, a little girl who finds Mr. E inside a book. “The girl and the character have a transfer of consciousness,” says Poturica. “So now he is able to see what she has seen in her life. It’s sort of a take on that writer-reader connection where we can see what the author is talking about. This is a reverse of that. So when he reads about a sunset in his book, now he can visualize it.”

Jason Poturica is represented by Birchwood Art Gallery in Winnipeg. His work is priced at $225 to $2,250.